Brian Thompson: Vacation Adjustment Blues

The VAB has set in. Oh, and it’s a mean one. Made worse by California jet lag. A three-hour time difference that socks it to you after the flight back. It was past midnight when we all settled down and got the eyes to rest the first couple nights. And God only knows what time we woke up. That’ll do wonders for work.

And it doesn’t help in getting over the VAB — the “Vacation Adjustment Blues.” That’s when you come back from a particularly amazing trip and the real world seems … well … a little too real.

It’s the realization that there are no Pacific Coast Highway cliffs just outside your door. No sea otters to spy. That you won’t spend the entire day with your daughter and wife, from the moment you wake up to that second in the evening when the eyes slam shut. That there are bigger responsibilities — “I have to feed the dog?” “I have to go to work?” “I can’t drink beer in the middle of the day!!!” — and decisions to be made. Not like on vacation, when the most pressing questions revolved around where to get lunch or whether eating six donuts would make me physically ill.

It’s now the realization that if I want coffee in the morning, I’m darn well going to have to make it myself.

We were spoiled, especially in Los Angeles staying with friends in Hollywood. They had a guesthouse and a resident ninja. Coffee, we were told, was ready by 6 or so. What a luxury!

That was also when the ninja awoke — a 6-year-old boy named Lucas. He had a sister named Lila, but she didn’t sport any ninja moves.

“What do you do at 6 in the morning?” I asked the boy.

“I party,” he replied.

“You party? What do you mean you party?”

“I eat some cereal. Watch a show. Do some ninja moves. You know … party!”

Of course you do. For all I knew, he was the one making the pot of coffee … and drinking the first cup … or maybe even the second. That’s probably how he learned to combine Kung fu with breakdancing, all on the kitchen floor. Only in L.A.!

And only on vacation can you appreciate a 6 a.m. ninja attack.

Sometimes I envy those traveling families I see in restaurants who never look like they’re having fun. The kids are crotchety and complaining about sunburns and food that sucks. The mom is dreaming of soap operas, or the waiter. The dad is ticked at all of them because he mortgaged the house to pay for the trip, everyone is miserable and someone ate the last strip of bacon. How dare they!

Those people can’t wait to get home. There’s no adjustment blues waiting for them. They’re perfectly miserable on vacation. Why am I so unlucky to have an incredible time?!?

“Stop offering me the last strip of bacon!” I cry. “I can’t take your vacation humanity!”

But even through the VAB and the California jet lag, you can’t say this is a bad town to come back to. In fact, it’s pretty darn great.

We sat outside at a restaurant overlooking our glorious bay the first day back. It’s a post-trip ritual of ours — do something fun and vacation-like right away. Something to remind us that real life isn’t so bad. That our town has plenty of what we just left.

I took a picture of the water and the idyllic sailboats as the sun sank lower. The sky was filled with cotton candy clouds. It was postcard-perfect … like a scene you see on vacation. The vacation we were just on. Which is why I took the picture — like a tourist in my own town. To remind me that we’re surrounded by vacations 365 days a year. It’s why thousands of people come to this place every year.

We live here in Vacationland. Immersed in beauty and natural wonder. We just forget it, or can’t see it while buried in the hassle of the day-to-day. Truth is, we travel hundreds of miles to see this very same thing.

That reality is helping with the adjustment. Helping with the blues. I’m going to try to remember that. Remind myself of it everyday — to not miss the forest for the trees. But the 6 a.m. coffee and resident ninja? Well, I guess you can’t have everything.